September Fine Motor: Core Strength, Postural Controll, and Small Muscle Development

During our Fine Motor  schedule blocks this month we spent time getting ready to write!  We practiced a number of activities that promoted core strength, postural control, and small muscle development.  Did you know that core strength and postural control are needed for the development of fine motor skills in children? Development occurs from the trunk outward so it was important that we "exercised our bellies".

Above: Planks for core strength. It's really tricky to stay straight as a board with your belly off the ground!

Above: Partner sit-ups. This took effort and cooperation!

Other core exercises:

We loved doing the "crab walk" and the "inchworm walk"

Another great option is to "wheelbarrow" walk with a partner.  If you enjoy those try the "superman".  In this activity you lay on your tummy and then lift your head arms and legs up as if you are flying. Try to stay in that position as long as you can.

Your child also works on core strength each day on the playground as they climb, hang, and play.

An example of a small muscle development activity is sorting with tweezers.

We had to concentrate as we sorted various manipulatives by different attributes.  Many friends felt like working with the tweezers was similar to using chopsticks to eat! 

To take the activity a step farther we practiced creating letters in our names using manipulatives!

Bravo 6-B

We are ready to begin our formal writing curriculum this upcoming first week of October.

6-B Family Trees!

During our discovery unit on "Family", our sharing was to bring in a picture of your family. We loved having the opportunity to get to know one another a little better during this time. Our project for this unit was to paint our own family trees. We then cut out apples to represent each member of our family.  We did our best to write our family members names in pencil. 

Our trees are now on display in the hallway downstairs. We will make a special trip this week to visit them.
Our next discover unit is "Apples"!

"The Spoon Game"- Letter Identification

 One of the letter identification games we have been playing in reading is called the "Spoon Game".  This fun, hands-on approach to identifying upper and lowercase letters could easily be played at home too!  All I did was use a permanent marker on spoons. Uppercase letters are written on colored spoons and the corresponding lowercase letter is written on a clear plastic spoon.  At the start of the game all of the letters are mixed up.  Students work together to find and match the letters. As the place the clear spoon onto the uppercase match they say the letter sound aloud.  To make things more tricky, I ask the students to place all of the "matches" in proper ABC order.

Bravo Readers!

Friendship Key Chains

In homeroom, we have just finished our discovery unit on friendship.

You may have noticed the new key chains on your child's backpack.
Those were made during a closing activity. This experience promoted
fine motor development as children strung beads. The students also
needed to incorporate math skills as they made their very own
pattern. Lastly, we practiced sharing, and being appreciative as we
let another friend in 6B receive the key chain as a gift.

Reading Begins!

I am so excited to have started our groups.  Each class we will begin with our morning message.

Why do we write a morning message?

By participating in the writing of our morning message, students learn...

writing is speech written down
proper letter formation 
upper and lower case letter recognition 
associating letters and sounds 
left to right progression 
differentiate between a letter, a word, and a sentence 
reading of common sight words
spacing 
punctuation 
to look for patterns within words (word families)

Sample Questions I will ask the students:

Can someone show me where I start my morning message?
What sound do you hear at the beginning of this word?
What letter do I write at the beginning of that word?
What do I put at the end of that sentence?
What do I put at the end of that question?
How do I show that we are excited about going?
How do I end my sentence?
Can anyone help me spell the word, 'love'?
Does anyone know what letter to begin 'Today' with?
Can you find a word you know and circle it?
Can you find a word that begins like Adam?
Can you find a word that rhymes with ______?

Progression of  the morning message:

Over time I will start to make mistakes in the morning message. I may:

Omit letters on purpose

   Make mistakes in capitalization “good Morning”

      Incorporate sight words and have students spy them

      Phonemic awareness mistakes “Good Torning Class”

     Make Calvert handwriting mistakes! Forget the tail on a letter

        Invert letters! Write a backwards “b” “j” etc.

Currently we are working on letter recognition in our morning meetings.  
For example, for our initial message (pictured above) we found each work that contained 
the letter "e" in it. Each friend had a chance to "share the pen" and circle an "e" that they found.  Once we found the total number of "e" letter we did that many jumping jacks.  I then read the message aloud again and had students clap each time I read a word containing an "e"

I love that the morning messages contain VAKT linkages

Visual: see the message as I read it aloud and point to each word
Auditory: hear the message as I read aloud and point to each work
Kinesthetic: practice jumping jacks (harder for this age group then you would expect) completing the number dictated by the message. Leaving a seated position to "share

the pen"
Tactile: share the pen as they find and circle specific letters, punctuation, words etc.

Feel free to use any of these ideas at home for a fun learning experience.

Meeting Our Fifth Grade Buddies!

On Friday we meet our fifth grade buddies!  Our partnership is with Mrs. McCormick's homeroom girls.

Our visitors came bearing gifts- a sweet note for each member of our class!

We all introduced ourselves then spent a little time getting to know one another. We even read books together from our class library.

We can't wait to see you again!

Happy Purple Friday

6-B had a great time showing our Raven's spirit!

We also enjoyed beginning our first math chapter. Above, we sorted manipulatives by various attributes (color, size, type of animal etc.) We then began our written work in Chapter 1.

 Below, you will find a summary of the objectives and vocabulary we will be covering during that time:

•     identifying objects that are alike and different; vocabulary- alike, different
•     sorting objects using one attribute; vocabulary- sort
•     sorting objects to determine whether or not they belong in a group
•     sorting objects using more than one attribute
•     using one-to-one correspondence to show equal groups; vocabulary- same number
•     using one-to-one correspondence to identify a group with more; vocabulary-more than
•     using one-to-one correspondence to identify a group with less ; vocabulary- less than

Please feel free to practice some of your own sorting, grouping, and one-to-one correspondence at home using these vocabulary words.  In class, I encourage the students to physically touch and then move objects as they practice on-to-one correspondence with manipulatives.

Parent's Night

I'm so excited to show our classroom to all of your parents tonight.  They will hear about all of the fun things we are doing at school.  They will see your special portfolios and maybe write you a little love note for the morning!

I can't wait to see your Raven's Spirit tomorrow! Don't forget to wear your purple, 6-B!

Love,

Ms. Clark

Celebrating our Summer Reading!

We had a wonderful time making connections to our summer reading book "A Birthday for Bear" by Bonny Becker. Before snack, we read and discussed the book as a class. Next we celebrated by eating cupcakes topped with gummy bears!

Later we discussed in partners what we like to do on our own birthdays.

We then dictated a sentence and illustrated what we like to do on our birthdays.

During math, we made a graph of all 6B birthdays.  We found that our class has the most birthdays during the month of September

The last surprise of the day was that each student received a red balloon to take home (just like the birthday bear in our story)!

Great work 6-B!